When Mr. Ritsuo Shingo - whose father developed the process of SMED (Single Minutes Exchange of Die; a literal translation) - visited Cambridge last week, we were treated to an overview of how the process was implemented to be part of the famed Toyota Production System. To watch a brief summary of his presentation to Cambridge employees and Lean tour guests, click here.

Mr. Shingo, a LEAN Expert, has much to share with Cambridge

Stretch Your Way to Workplace Safety

Recognizing the "Good Catch"

At Cambridge, we speak of having love for our fellow employees often. This isn’t the romantic love, though today is Valentine’s Day, but rather, the sort of love that is built upon mutual respect, admiration, and encouragement to learn and grow personally. Our playbook even includes the phrase “We express unconditional love and high expectations while behaving with care, courage, integrity and respect.” It might not be instinctive to recognize love in the workplace, but when you are aware of it, we’d bet that it is, in fact, surrounding you. We are going to share some examples of how love manifests itself into everyday life in our workplace, so that anyone reading this blog may start to recognize

One might consider labeling the items you use in your everyday workspace part of the low-hanging fruit when starting in your lean journey.  As simple as it seems, it could also be one of the most important. It’s easy to underestimate the time spent looking for a tool, or referencing it against a process checklist to make sure it’s correct. But, imagine you have been assigned a task that should take about 20 minutes to complete. Your workspace has the equipment necessary, but there are also extra tools, scattered around the workstation. The task should be easy, but you haven’t performed this exact task in the past few months. A good portion of this 20 minutes could be spent just trying to figure out what you need, and what might be missing.